The Eighth Dwarf

by Ross Thomas

  “Once.”

  The dwarf nodded thoughtfully. “They wouldn’t talk to him,” he said, more to himself than to Jackson. “His bona fides are all wrong.” Ploscaru brightened. “What else did he tell you?”

  “He told me about all the people Kurt Oppenheimer supposedly killed during the war—and afterwards.”

  Ploscaru sipped his drink. “Probably mentioned the SS major general and the Bavarian Gauleiter.”

  “I thought you didn’t know anything about it.”

  “I told you I’d heard rumors—most of them a bit fanciful. What else did he say?”

  “That the British don’t want him in Palestine. Oppenheimer.”

  The dwarf seemed to turn that information over in his mind for several moments, sorting it out, estimating its worth, probing its validity. He nodded then, a number of times, as though satisfied, and said, “An interesting point. Very interesting. It could lead to all kinds of speculation.”

  “Yes, it could, couldn’t it?”

  Ploscaru made his eyebrows go up to form a silent question.

  “I mean,” Jackson said, “that’s there’s a possibility that we’re not being paid by a retired zipper king, but by the Zionists.”

  “I should make it a point never to underestimate you, Minor. Sometimes you’re most refreshing. Would that bother you, if it were true—the Zionist thing?”

  Jackson raised his glass in a small, indifferent toast. “Up the Israelites.”

  The dwarf smiled happily. “We’re very much alike in many ways, aren’t we?”

  “I’m taller,” Jackson said.

  “Yes, I suppose that’s true.” The dwarf gazed up at the ceiling. “You know what’s really going on out there, don’t you?”

  “Where?”

  “In the Middle East.”

  “A power struggle.”

  “Exactly. Between Russia and Britain.”

  “That’s not exactly new.”

  Ploscaru nodded. “No, but there is a new government in Britain.”

  “But not one that’s dedicated to the liquidation of the British Empire.”

  “No, of course not. So Britain has got to keep some kind of physical grip on the Middle East. Russia’s still nibbling away at Turkey and Iran, and Britain’s either going to pull out or be kicked out of Egypt and Iraq.”

  “So that leaves Palestine.”

  “And Trans-Jordan, but Palestine mostly. Palestine is key. So if Britain is going to keep on being a world power, which means keeping the Russians out of the Mideast, then it must have a base. Palestine will do quite nicely, especially if the Jews and the Arabs are at each other’s throats. It would be easier to control. It always has been—except for one thing.”

  “The Jews have started knocking off the British.”

  “Exactly,” the dwarf said. “A rather interesting situation, don’t you think? But to get back to poor old Baker-Bates. What else did he say?”

  “He said that both the Americans and the British are after Oppenheimer.”

  “The French?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Probably not. The French are so practical.”

  “But the ones who want him most of all are the Russians.”

  “Well, now. Did he say why?”

  “He said it’s because they want to hire him. He also said to tell you that.”

  “Yes,” Ploscaru said as, without thinking, he clasped the glass between his knees so that he could slowly dust his hands off. “Yes, I’m very glad that you did.”

  Two days later, at six o’clock in the morning of the day that he and the dwarf were to leave for Washington, Jackson finally met Winona Wilson. There had been a farewell party somewhere the night before, and Jackson awoke with a mild hangover and the slightly blurred vision of a tall blond woman of about twenty-six who stood looking down at him, her hands on her hips.

  Jackson blinked his eyes rapidly to clear his vision and said, “Good morning.”

  “Somebody’s been sleeping in my bed,” she said. “I think that’s what I’m supposed to say, according to the book.”

  “I think I’ve read that one.”

  “Your name’s not Goldilocks, though, is it?” she said. “No, not with that hair. I actually used to know a Goldilocks, although he spelled it with an x. Old Sam Goldilox over in Pasadena.”

  “You must be Winona Wilson,” Jackson said. “How’s your mother, Winona?”

  “Stingy. Tightfisted. Parsimonious. Who’re you, a friend of Nick’s?”

  “Uh-huh. One Minor Jackson. Where is he, Nick?”

  She nodded toward the bedroom door. “Asleep. I’ve just made a quick tour—counting the spoons, stuff like that. You’ve kept it very neat. I’m surprised.”

  “We had a maid in yesterday.”

  “When’re you leaving?”

  “What time is it now?”

  She looked at her watch. “Six. A little after.”

  “Christ. About nine. Okay?”

  “No rush,” she said, and sat down on the edge of the bed and started unbuttoning her blouse. When she had it off, she turned toward him and said, “When I first saw you lying there, I thought you were about sixty. The hair.”

  “It’s gray.”

  “I know,” she said as she removed her skirt and tossed it on a chair. “I bet it turned that way overnight.”

  “As a matter of fact, it did,” Jackson said as he watched her shed the rest of her clothes. She had unusually fine breasts and long, lean legs that some might have thought too thin, although Jackson thought they were fine. She turned and paused as though to give him a full view, and Jackson noticed that her eyes were blue. Periwinkle blue, he thought, but realized that he wasn’t really quite sure whether a periwinkle was a fish or a flower or both. He resolved to look it up.

  “Tell me about it,” she said as she slipped underneath the covers next to him. “Tell me about how your hair turned gray overnight.”

  “All right,” Jackson said.

  It was about eight when Ploscaru wandered into the bedroom holding a saucer and a cup of coffee. He took a sip, nodded pleasantly at Jackson and Winona Wilson, said, “I see you two have met,” and wandered out. Winona Wilson giggled.

  Their departure from the house in the Hollywood hills was delayed nearly an hour because of the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, and New Orleans. Ploscaru wanted to visit all of them on the way to Washington. It was only after a bitter debate, with Winona Wilson siding with the dwarf, that a compromise of sorts was reached. Yellowstone was out, but both the Grand Canyon and New Orleans were in.

  “It’s still about a thousand miles out of the way,” Jackson said grumpily as he studied the oil-company map that he had spread on the hood of the Plymouth.

  “But well worth both the time and expense,” Ploscaru said. He jumped up on the convertible’s running board, took Winona Wilson’s hand, and brushed his lips against it with a bit of a flourish. “Winona, you have, as always, been more than generous.”

  “Anytime, Nick,” she said as she smiled, leaned over, and kissed him on the top of his head.

  Jackson folded the map, stuck it in his jacket pocket, moved over to the tall blond woman, put an arm around her, and kissed her lightly on the mouth. “You’re the best thing that’s happened in a long time. Thanks.”

  She smiled. “If you’re ever out here again, Slim, stop by. You can tell me more war stories.”

  “Sure,” Jackson said. “I’ll do that.”

  6

  His papers said that he was a journeyman printer. The papers were tightly wrapped in yellow oilskin tied with stout string and were now pressed against his lean stomach by his belt. The papers also said that his name was Otto Bodden, that he had been born in Berlin thirty-nine years before, and that his political preference was the Social Democratic party, a preference which had cost him five years in the concentration camp at Belsen.

  He had been a printer. That much was true. And he had been born in
Berlin and grown up there. That was not only true, but also necessary, because the people around Lübeck distrusted Berliners—despised them, really—and could recognize them in a second by their gab as well as by their figuratively big noses which they were always poking into places that didn’t concern them. Berliners were Prussians. Wisecracking Prussians, perhaps, but still Prussians.

  As for the name, well, Otto Bodden would serve as well as any. There had been many names since he had taken his first alias thirteen years before. He tried to remember what that first one had been. It came to him after a second or two. Klaus Kalkbrenner. His lips twitched into a smile as he crouched in the trees and studied the three early-morning anglers across the canal. Young Klaus Kalkbrenner, he remembered, had been something of an idiot.

  He had no watch, so he had to depend on the sun. He turned to examine it. It was already up, but not quite enough. It would be a few more minutes until the patrol came along. He turned back to continue his study of the fishermen across the canal. One of them had caught something; not a bad-sized fish; a carp perhaps, although Bodden wasn’t at all sure whether carp swam in the Elbe-Trave Canal.

  He adjusted the rucksack on his back which contained his one coat and the shirt and trousers he would change into once he made it across the canal. They too were all wrapped up in oilskin. No spare shoes or socks, though. That would have been overdoing it, because no refugee printer would have an extra pair of shoes. He would have sold them by now, or traded them for something to eat.

  He turned for another look at the sun. Ten more minutes, he estimated. Turning back, he fished out his last cigarette. It was an American cigarette, a Camel. They had given him a pack of them in Berlin a week before, and he carefully had made them last until now. American cigarettes were another thing a refugee printer wouldn’t have. He wondered what the black-market price for an American cigarette was in Lübeck: three Reichsmarks; four? It had been five in Berlin.

  He took a match from one of the three left in the small waterproof steel canister and struck it against the sole of his shoe. He lit the cigarette and pulled the smoke down into his lungs. He liked American cigarettes. He liked their names, too: Camels, Lucky Strikes, Old Golds, Chesterfields, Wings. For some reason, Wings didn’t bring as good a price on the Berlin black market. He wasn’t sure why. He pulled in another lungful of smoke, held it down, and then luxuriously blew it out. It was his first smoke in three days, and he could feel it—a slight, pleasant, dizzying sensation.

  Someone had once told him that the Americans used treacle to cure their tobacco. He wondered if that was true. He also wondered how good his English really was. He had learned it in Belsen from a Pole. The Pole had been a very funny fellow who had claimed to have once lived in Cleveland and had assured Bodden that the English he was being taught was the American kind. The Pole had had a lot of amusing theories. One of them was that Poles made the world’s best fighter pilots. That’s the problem with us Poles, he had once told Bodden. All our politicians should really have been fighter pilots.

  There wasn’t much left to his cigarette now. A few centimeters. Regretfully, Bodden took one last puff and ground it into the dirt with his shoe. He heard them then, the patrol. One of them was whistling. That was how it was supposed to be.

  Well, here goes nothing, he said to himself in English. That had been one of the Pole’s favorite phrases, which he had also guaranteed to be proper American usage. In fact, it was the last thing he had ever said to Bodden that April morning in 1944 when they had led the Pole away to be shot or hanged. Hanged probably, Bodden decided. They wouldn’t have wasted a bullet on a Pole. Gniadkiewicz. That had been the Pole’s name, Bodden remembered. Roman Gniadkiewicz. A very funny fellow.

  Bodden took a deep breath, scuttled out of the trees and across the path, and slipped into the canal with a small splash. Christ, it was cold! He heard the Russian patrol shout Halt. How the hell do you halt when you’re swimming? he wondered. They were supposed to shout it three times, for the benefit of anyone who might be listening—for the British especially; but a lot of the Russians were dumb bastards, farm boys who might not be able to count that high. So Bodden took a deep breath and dived underwater just as the first rifle cracked.

  When he came up, they were still shooting at him—well, almost at him. A bullet smacked into the water less than a meter away, far less, and Bodden dived under again. A show-off, he thought as he used a breaststroke to swim the last few meters. One of them had to be a show-off.

  When he came up again, he saw that he had come up right where he had wanted to—not far from the three German fishermen, who stared down at him as he treaded water, blowing and sputtering.

  “Well, what have we got here?” said one of the anglers, a man of about sixty.

  “A very wet fish,” Bodden said.

  “Maybe we ought to throw him back,” the old man said as he put down his pole. The other two men laughed. They were old too, Bodden saw; somewhere in their late sixties.

  The first old man came over to where Bodden still treaded water. He knelt down and stretched out his hand. He was a big, still-powerful old man, who barely grunted as he hauled Bodden up and onto the bank of the canal. “There you are, Herr Fish,” the old man said. “Nice and dry.”

  “Thanks,” Bodden said. “Thanks very much.”

  The old man shrugged. “It was nothing,” he said, and went back and picked up his pole.

  Across the canal, the three Russian soldiers were yelling at Bodden. He grinned and yelled back at them in Russian.

  “What did you tell them, Herr Fish?” asked the old man who had dragged him out of the canal.

  “I told them what their mothers do with the pigs.”

  “You speak Russian?”

  “Just enough to tell them that.”

  The old man nodded. “Somebody should.”

  Bodden looked around. There was no one in sight except the three old fishermen—and the Russians, of course, but they didn’t count. He took off his shoes first. Then he removed his knapsack and his wet shirt and squeezed the water out of the shirt. The three old men looked away politely while Bodden changed into the dry clothes.

  When dressed, Bodden went over and squatted down by the old man who had hauled him out of the canal. “How far into the center of town?”

  “A little over six kilometers—along that path there.” The old man gestured with his head.

  “That fish you caught earlier—what was it?”

  “You were watching?”

  “From over there.”

  “It was a carp.”

  “That’s what I thought it was,” Bodden said. “A carp.”

  It took Bodden a little more than an hour and a half to reach the center of Lübeck. Before the war it had had a population of about 100,000, but German refugees from the East and displaced persons from almost everywhere had swollen that figure to nearly double its prewar size. Some of this Bodden learned when he stopped several times to ask directions. The refugees and the DP’s flocked to Lübeck because it had been bombed only once, on Palm Sunday in 1942. The raid was supposed to have taken out the docks and the industrial belt, but instead it had wiped out about a third of the old city center.

  “Because of Coventry, you know,” one old man told Bodden. “We hit Coventry; they hit us. Retaliation.”

  The DP’s, Bodden learned, were mostly Poles and Latvians and Estonians, and nobody liked them. Many of them were thieves—clever thieves, one man said, who “lust after bicycles.” Whatever they stole often turned up on the black market which flourished in a small street that was pointed out to Bodden.

  The street was called Botcherstrasse, and it seemed to contain not only the town’s black market but also its brothels. Because it led from Fischergrube to Beckergrube, which was on his way, Bodden took it. He found that one could buy almost anything for a price in that one short block. There were cigarettes, of course, mostly British, as well as coffee, meat, poultry, fats, and clothing. Bodden even
found a pair of shoelaces, which he quickly bought from a Pole who brandished a thick wad of notes. Bodden had looked for two months in Berlin for a pair of laces without luck. The ones that he bought after the customary bargaining seemed new, probably prewar, and he felt lucky to have found them despite their exorbitant price.

  From Beckergrube it was only a short walk to the newspaper plant on Königstrasse. It was a crowded, busy street packed with pedestrians and bicycles, and Bodden had to shoulder his way to the entrance of the Lübecker Post. The street floor was given over to a job printing shop, and after inquiries Bodden was sent to the director’s office on the second floor.

  He had to wait, of course. The Herr Direktor was a busy man, with many important affairs and responsibilities that commanded his time, but if Bodden would care to wait, it was just possible that he would be granted an audience, although a brief one.

  The director’s secretary hadn’t asked him to sit while he waited, but Bodden sat anyway, in a straight-backed wooden chair. He sat for fifteen minutes, almost without moving, and then crossed his legs. The secretary was a stern-faced woman of about forty, skinny almost to the point of emaciation, who pounded away industriously on an old typewriter. The telephone rang four times while Bodden waited the first fifteen minutes; five times while he waited the second fifteen.

  Three minutes later, he was shown into the presence of the director, Dieter Rapke, who, Bodden thought, was too young for the self-important air that he gave himself. At forty-two, Rapke looked like a man whom the war and its aftermath had cheated out of middle-aged plumpness. He had a round head that by now should have been growing some double chins, but wasn’t. It gave him a curiously unfinished look. When times get better, Bodden thought, that one will eat.

  Rapke peered up at the man who stood before his littered desk. He didn’t ask the man to sit down. It didn’t occur to him. After a moment he took off his rimless glasses, polished them with a handkerchief, and put them back on.

  “So,” Rapke said, “you are a printer.”

  “Yes,” Bodden said, “and a good one.”

  “From Berlin.”

  “From Berlin.”